Genetic Ascension

Sylas looked at Two for several seconds before turning his attention away, his expression carrying the same indifference it had before the Professor appeared. He had waited this long for confirmation that someone else was moving behind Caelum and Scurrying Madness, and now that he had it, there was no reason to waste time answering a man who clearly enjoyed hearing himself speak.

Two didn’t seem offended by the dismissal, but Scurrying Madness certainly was. The final chains shattered almost together, metallic links the size of buildings whipping through Hell as the cyborg Rat tore itself completely free, yet despite the hatred it had shown toward Two, its yellow eyes never once left Sylas.

Fanelei’s face went pale before her senses could even follow what happened, while Cheri didn’t manage much better. Scurrying Madness crossed the distance with a speed that shouldn’t have belonged to anything interacting with C-tiers at all, and Caelum, who had been standing between them only moments earlier, disappeared into its mouth when the Rat inhaled.

There wasn’t even enough time for Caelum to resist properly. His golden domain compressed into a stream alongside his body, his stolen strength and half-formed Space disappearing between Scurrying Madness’ metallic jaws as the creature continued forward without slowing.

Sylas raised a hand and pushed it into the Void.

**

Alex leaned over the half-disassembled mechanism spread across the table while Nathan adjusted a component on the opposite side, both of them too focused to notice anything unusual until a hand appeared out of empty space beside them. It reached directly past Alex’s shoulder, closed around the floating Omnimous, and disappeared again before either man could react.

The two stared at the empty space for several seconds before slowly looking toward one another, neither seeming particularly eager to acknowledge what had just happened. Alex cleared his throat first and glanced back toward the table.

“Did you see that?”

“Nope. Nothing to see here.”

Alex nodded with complete seriousness. “It just up and vanished, right?”

“Exactly right.”

“He can’t blame us for that.”

“Not at all.”

They both cleared their throats and returned to the mechanism in front of them, silently agreeing that whatever had just happened was Sylas’ problem now.

** 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Scurrying Madness’ jaws were already closing when Sylas’ hand returned from the Void with the Omnimous resting in his palm. Two’s posture changed for the first time since arriving, his attention snapping toward the object quickly enough that Sylas knew he recognized at least some of what it represented.

But it was already too late for that recognition to matter.

The Omnimous didn’t need to overpower the technology inside Scurrying Madness to understand it. Technological analysis was one of the foundations of its inheritance, and the moment Sylas fed his Will through it, the device began stripping the cyborg’s systems apart according to function, identifying where hardware ended, where software began, and how each layer communicated with the next.

Then Sylas supplied the part the Omnimous couldn’t understand on its own.

Greed.

His Virtue Seed stirred as his Will passed through the Omnimous and into the machinery forming Scurrying Madness’ body. The cyborg had been designed around the Rat’s Will, but buried at its center was something far older than the intelligence controlling the metal wrapped around it.

The Scorpion’s heart beat once, and Sylas felt it answer him immediately.

The control architecture inside Scurrying Madness attempted to compensate as the Omnimous mapped its systems, but those systems had been built around the assumption that the heart was merely a component to be restrained and exploited. Sylas carried the Virtue that heart had once represented, and the moment his Greed touched it, the difference in authority became impossible to ignore.

The heart recognized him more readily than it recognized the machine built around it, and that was all Sylas needed.

The technology inside Scurrying Madness resonated with the systems buried in the distant doors, one network responding to the other as the Omnimous traced the connection between them. Sylas used that bridge rather than fighting against it, allowing his Greed to slip into the point where biological authority met technological command until the enormous cyborg hesitated.

Its jaws stopped closing while a roar rolled through the metallic body from somewhere deep inside. Sylas stepped through Space before Scurrying Madness could recover, appearing above it and settling one foot against the enormous Rat’s head while the Omnimous hovered over his palm.

Two’s earlier amusement had faded by then.

Sylas looked up at him without changing expression, but he still didn’t attack. Instead, he turned slightly toward the two women behind him while Scurrying Madness trembled beneath his feet, caught between its own Will, the Scorpion heart, and the machinery attempting to control both. From the very beginning, every shift in time he had slipped through and every fold of space he had slipped past, he had carried them forward with him.

In reality, he had always been three calculations per every movement instead of the one Caelum had been. They had never been on the same level.

“Hands on my back.” he said indifferently.

Both women reacted immediately, appearing behind him despite the pressure rolling from Scurrying Madness. Fanelei opened the floodgates of her A-tier Aether while Cheri allowed the buried strength of her God Realm foundation to pour through him, giving Sylas the raw power he needed for what came next.

He reached into the Void again and pulled out the Genesis Forge Ore.

Two’s eyes shifted toward it.

Hell Rune Creation spread through the ore while Fathomless Strokes formed around him, the borrowed power behind them giving him enough reach to touch something far beyond the layer of Hell they currently occupied. The Genesis Forge Ore stabilized the connection as Space folded, Time adjusted, and Hell itself was forced to acknowledge that distance between its layers meant very little when every one of them occupied the same underlying place.

The world rocked as Scurrying Madness staggered beneath Sylas.

An enormous shadow appeared overhead and continued growing until even the cyborg Rat seemed small beneath it. Hell split across several layers at once, the boundaries between them grinding together while something immense was dragged through the connection Sylas had forced open.

Slithering Madness appeared.

Its enormous body crashed into the region with enough force to send waves through the obsidian landscape, but Sylas barely looked at the destruction. His attention remained on Two as the Professor studied the creature he had left behind.

The restraints that had bound Slithering Madness were gone.

Two’s eyes slowly narrowed.